lost, there grew a Sanskrit legend, which is to be found also in
Teutonic and Celtic myths. This story is, that Bheki (the frog)
was a lovely maiden who was found by a king, who asked her to be
his wife. So she married him, but only on condition that he
should never show her a drop of water. One day she grew tired,
and asked for water. The king gave it to her, and she sank out
of his sight; in other words, the sun disappears when it touches
the water.

This imagery of the Aryans was applied by them to all they saw
in the sky. Sometimes, as we have said, the clouds were cows;
they were also dragons, which sought to slay the sun; or great
ships floating across the sky, and casting anchor upon earth; or
rocks, or mountains, or deep caverns, in which evil deities hid
the golden light. Then, also, they were shaped by fancy into
animals of various kinds-the bear, the wolf, the dog, the ox;
and into giant birds, and into monsters which were both bird and
beast.

The Winds, again, in their fancy, were the companions or the
ministers of Indra, the sky-god. The Maruts, or spirits of the
winds, gathered into their host the souls of the dead--thus
giving birth to the Scandinavian and Teutonic legend of the Wild
Horseman, who rides at midnight through the stormy sky, with his
long train of dead behind him, and his weird hounds before. The
Ribhus, or Arbhus, again, were the sunbeams or the lightning,
who forged the armour of the Gods, and made their thunderbolts,
and turned old people young, and restored out of the hide alone
the slaughtered cow on which the Gods had feasted. Out of these
heavenly artificers, the workers of the clouds, there came, in